Dr. David “Dan” Offord was founding director of the Offord Centre for Child Studies, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster, and one of the world’s leading experts in child development and child psychiatry. He was an outstanding scientist, a devoted clinician and a passionate advocate of children and youth, an extraordinary leader whose work has had a profound influence on the practice of child psychiatry and on mental health research and policy across many continents. His life and career stand as a shining example of what can be achieved through the combination of first-class scholarship and a practical clinical concern for the wellbeing of all children. With his modest and affable demeanor, Dan was truly a “gentle giant” in the field of children’s mental health.

Dan began his research career at the University of Florida, which he followed with stints at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Ottawa, before joining the faculty at McMaster in 1978 as associate professor, Department of Psychiatry and Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Here he discovered his real research passion, child psychiatric epidemiology. His work focused on children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are at risk of leading lives marred by low self-esteem, emotional problems and lack of opportunity.

In the early ‘80s, Dan launched the Ontario Child Health Study (OCHS), a landmark study that reported the disturbing statistic that one in five children has a serious mental health problem. The study remains one of the most important population-based studies on children’s mental health conducted anywhere in the last 30 years. It has become a model for similar studies in other countries and continues to fuel groundbreaking research into the factors that cause children to be “at risk”.

The OCHS, and the wealth of data it produced, would become the catalyst for the creation of the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk at McMaster (later renamed in Dan’s honour). Dan saw the Centre as an opportunity to retain talented young scientists who would continue to conduct leading edge research into children’s mental health. In what is surely his most enduring legacy, the Offord Centre has grown to become one of the world’s leading centres for the scientific study of child emotional and behavioural problems, highly regarded in Canada and throughout the world for the strength of its research and its commitment to train future generations of scientists to tackle the issues that have an impact on children’s mental health and development.

Dan’s expertise in the area of disadvantaged children and youth continued to earn him international acclaim and deep admiration from colleagues in Canada and around the world. He served 10 years as a National Health Scientist, and was a member of the Premier’s Council on Health, Well-being, and Social Justice (1991-95). He became involved with the children’s mental health programs of the National Institutes of Health in Washington, and was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development. In 2001, he received the Order of Canada in recognition of his work as a psychiatrist and his commitment to improving the lives of children.

Yet Dan was most remarkable, not only for his extraordinary accomplishments, but for his “down-to-earthness”. He loved sports, especially football. He loved soap operas, and the simple pleasures of life. Above all he loved to talk – about research, about life and especially about children. Children were his passion, and the highlight of every year was the summer, when he would return to Ottawa and his job as director of Christie Lake Camp, a camp for disadvantaged children. It was this real-life experience that grounded his research and clinical practice and reinforced his belief that the right supports delivered early in a child’s development can enrich the life quality and life chances of our most vulnerable children.

Dan was devoted to his family – his wife, Margaret; children, Karen, Michael, Jennifer and Stephen; step-children Caroline and Janeen Parkin; and his first wife, Sondra, who died in 1992. Those he leaves behind – his family, his colleagues, the children he cared for so deeply – will always remember him for his important contributions to research and his contributions to the lives of children everywhere.